Bamboo Soul
The "two-day journey" Cheng Du had mentioned took them two and a half days before they reached Spirit City.
They followed the imperial road west, passing through stretches of farmland and villages.
The wheat by the roadside had begun to turn yellow. When the wind blew, the fields looked as though they had been covered in golden waves.
Now and then, farmers driving ox carts approached from the opposite direction. When they saw the two riders passing, they would move toward the side of the road out of habit.
At those times, Cheng Du would slow his horse and let the carts pass first.
At noon on the third day, Lin Qing saw the outline of Spirit City in the distance.
Its walls were gray-black and tall, more than twice as thick as those of Heaven Dou City.
Flags stood at intervals along the walls, black with golden patterns. Each bore the emblem of Spirit Hall-two crossed swords with a crown suspended above them-gleaming coldly in the afternoon sun.
The spot where that flag stood was like an eye gazing ahead.
Silent and still, it hung above the city gate. Lin Qing looked up at it for a while, then lowered his gaze and continued forward with Cheng Du.
Cheng Du slowed his horse and glanced back at him. "We're here."
At the gate, he swung off his horse and led it inside. Lin Qing dismounted as well and followed him, leading the gray horse.
Two rows of black-clad guards stood at the gate, weapons hanging at their waists. Their gazes swept over, lingering on Lin Qing for a moment before moving away.
He didn't look back at them. He simply kept pace with Cheng Du and passed through the gate.
The moment he entered Spirit City, the whole city unfolded before his eyes.
The streets were wider than those in Heaven Dou City, paved with gray flagstones, every one polished bright as though countless feet had tread upon it.
There were no street vendors by the roadside, nor any shops calling out to customers. Now and then, someone would push open a half-closed door and step out, only to hurry past without a sideways glance.
There were many people in black robes, and no shortage of people dressed in red. Judging by their gait and their eyes, none were ordinary people.
There was an indescribable smell in the air, cold and heavy. It was like stone, dust, and something older mixed together.
As Lin Qing walked down the street, he could feel the gazes people cast his way. Some were fleeting, no more than a glance, while others lingered longer.
He made himself ignore them, keeping close to Cheng Du and occasionally turning his head to inspect the walls and doorplates by the roadside.
Cheng Du brought him to a row of stone houses in the western district and tossed him an iron token.
"Seventeen" was engraved on the front of the token, and Spirit Hall's emblem was on the back. Its edges had been worn bright and were smooth to the touch.
"Gather at the training ground tomorrow morning. Don't be late." With that, Cheng Du turned and left, soon disappearing at the mouth of the alley.
Lin Qing looked down at the iron token in his hand, then pushed open the door to house number seventeen and went inside. The room was small, with a bed, a table, and a chair.
An oil lamp and a small jug of water sat on the table. A wooden rack stood in the corner, with a folded thin blanket draped over it.
The window faced a narrow alley. Sunlight slanted in from the alley's entrance, leaving a narrow band of light on the floor.
He placed the iron token on the table and sat down.
He didn't rest immediately. Spirit City was too quiet. So quiet it was as though the whole city were holding its breath, waiting for something.
He needed to learn more about his surroundings, or at least find out where the people living in this area came from.
So he closed his eyes and drew his mental power out from the depths of his sea of consciousness.
The green mark deep in his sea of consciousness glimmered, and the Bamboo Soul took shape-a barely perceptible presence drifted from the center of his brow, passing through the gaps around the door and window like a wisp of invisible smoke and floating into the corridor.
Lin Qing's perception extended outward with the Bamboo Soul.
He could sense people in the rooms on both sides of the corridor. Each person's presence was different, like footprints of varying depths across the sand.
A burly man lived in the room at the far left, his Soul Power presence as weighty as a mountain.
His breathing was rough and deep, every exhalation carrying a heavy force, as though something were churning in his lungs.
That solid feeling reminded Lin Qing of a great boulder sunk in deep water: still, weighty, and hard to shake.
Someone lived in the second room on the right, their presence rather cold.
The person's breathing was shallow and even, as though they were deliberately keeping their presence subdued, but the faint movements they made when they occasionally turned over still gave away a trace.
They were probably a Soul Master skilled in close combat, accustomed to operating at night or in the shadows.
The room at the end of the corridor was the strangest. The person's presence was so faint that Lin Qing almost thought the room was empty.
The Bamboo Soul circled there a little longer before catching a trace of Soul Power fluctuations in the exceedingly slight gap between breaths.
Someone capable of suppressing their presence to that extent was at least at the Soul King level, and skilled at concealment and lying low. Lin Qing committed the room's location to memory and probed no further.
The Bamboo Soul continued onward, drifting beyond the courtyard wall and down onto a street in Spirit City.
The street was deserted, and a thin layer of dust lay on the flagstones.
The Bamboo Soul skimmed low along the ground and could sense an old locust tree on the street corner, its roots having heaved several paving stones upward.
The soil beneath the tree was damp, as though someone had just watered it.
Just as he was about to recall the Bamboo Soul, a presence came from the bend in the street-the person's footsteps stopped, and their gaze swept toward the Bamboo Soul. Lin Qing immediately drew it back.
The person's gaze pierced the empty air, landing at the edge of his perception from across the street like a needle. A moment later, the presence didn't pursue him. It merely paused, then turned into an alley to the side, its footsteps gradually fading into the distance.
Lin Qing opened his eyes. The Bamboo Soul had already returned to the depths of his sea of consciousness, where the green mark rotated quietly, like a seed slowly sinking into the earth.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at his palm. The two ice and fire marks glowed faintly beneath his skin.
Rather than hurry to his feet, he went over the ways to use the Bamboo Soul in his mind once more.
The Bamboo Soul could leave his body and act independently, but it couldn't go too far. The distance it could currently maintain was about ten zhang; beyond that range, its perception would grow hazy.
The Bamboo Soul itself had no attack power, but it could attach itself to objects or people and leave mental marks for tracking and locating them.
When necessary, the Bamboo Soul could also inflict a brief bout of Mental Interference on a target. It lasted only the briefest instant, but when experts fought, an instant's lapse was enough to change the situation.
He opened and closed his hand, sensing a faint resonance forming between the newly born mental mark and the two ice and fire crystals.
The three forces were like three different instruments, each playing its own tune within the same body.
Outside the window, the sky was darkening. Dusk in Spirit City was deeper and heavier than in Heaven Dou City, the gray-blue sky seeming to sink slowly down from overhead.
A bell rang out from a distant street, sounding like a bell marking the hour, or perhaps something else. The iron token still lay on the table. The number seventeen was hard to make out in the dim light, like a mark carved in the dark.
Lin Qing put the Bamboo Soul away and lay down. He knew that early tomorrow morning, this quiet street would come to life. The people hidden away in the various rooms would emerge and head to the training ground.
He didn't know what kind of opponents he would meet, but he knew he had come to Spirit City not just to take part in a selection. He also wanted to see the city's trump cards and its boundaries with his own eyes.
How far he could go, he would only know once he had seen.
[End of chapter fifteen]